Lenovo buying Motorola Mobility from Google for $2.91 billion

Numerous sources reported today about a potential acquisition of Motorola Mobility that comes not even three years after Google bought it for $12.5 billion, and Lenovo just made the news official.

The Chinese-manufacturer announced that it entered into “a definitive agreement” with Google to acquire the Motorola Mobility smartphone business in order to strengthen its own smartphone market, basically to give it a presence in the U.S.

The acquisition price is $2.91 billion, subject to certain adjustments, including $1.41 billion paid at close, comprised of $660 million in cash and $750 million in Lenovo ordinary shares. The remaining $1.5 billion will be paid in the form of a three-year promissory note.

Google will maintain ownership of the vast majority of the Motorola Mobility patent portfolio… Lenovo will receive a license to this rich portfolio of patents and other intellectual property. Additionally Lenovo will receive over 2,000 patent assets, as well as the Motorola Mobility brand and trademark portfolio.

Back in August 2011, when Google acquired Motorola Mobility, it had said it was mainly interested in its patent portfolio. After becoming “A Google Company,” we’ve seen successful devices like the Moto X and Moto G, but Google was still reportedly losing hundreds of millions each quarter since the purchase.

While Lenovo said that it will be acquiring the MOTOROLA brand and Motorola Mobility’s portfolio of smartphones, like the Moto X and Moto G and the DROID Ultra series, “Google will maintain ownership of the vast majority of the Motorola Mobility patent portfolio, including current patent applications and invention disclosures.”

Google will also be licensing the patents to Lenovo, who will be receiving over “2,000 patent assets.”

One other interesting thing to note is that Dennis Woodside, CEO of Motorola Mobility, said that the company has “tremendous momentum right now” with the launches of the Moto X and Moto G and that Lenovo’s hardware expertise and global reach should help accelerate that.

Google is supposed to be reporting its quarterly earnings tomorrow, so maybe we will have even more information then.